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GI.biz reports that Pirates Of The Caribbean director Gore Verbinski has told developers at the DICE summit in Las Vegas that “This is the time for madness.” The wealthier-than-thou mastermind behind the Pirates series has decided that games aren’t being crazy enough with the creative juices. (Tell that to ACE…)

“I understand why companies are making sequels. But if a developer is making a game from scratch, why are they making another Halo? There are so many other places to go,” said Verbinski. (“Well duh,” said half the gaming world.)

“In order to be fiscally responsible, you must operate outside of the data. You must possess some madness.”

The problem with videogames, you see, is that most of the time they’re made by the people who want to make videogames. And mad they are not.

It was a shame the sequels were such cack, I really enjoyed the first one and am not ashamed to admit it.

But yes, it is a bit of the old pot kettle black (my kettle is silver actually.. and I don’t have a pot, but anyway). Still, it would be nice if he did give a large cash donation to.. say.. Ron Gilbert.

It exists in gaming and fillums and music and cheese and everything else. The little people aren’t very smart and don’t have much taste. And so will it always be until we find a cure for genetic stupidity and rubbishness.

The developers aren’t the ones that need to get craaaaazy. Publishers are. I think most developers (or at least a great bunch of them) have great innovative ideas but those can’t get published. Or should I have to remind you of what happened to Elixir Studios or the problems Ron Gilbert went through to find a publisher to his game?

*shrugs* Crazy ideas are all very well and good, but translating them into a game that a) isn’t buggy, b) is playable, and c) is actually enjoyable….

Well, that’s a bit tricky, and not often managed. I can think of more than a few quirky oddball games on PC and/or from Japan that have great concepts but didn’t do well because, well, they’re not much fun.

this seems a little like Thom Yorke telling other musicians to cheer up.

Yorke has said in interviews he’s a bit tired of being typecast as a depressed musician. You could say it’s his fault for writing too many songs which involve depressed characters, and would probably be partially right. I think media typecasting is also at fault there though.

With regard to Pirates they did try to mix it up with the middle of the road surrealism (or however you want to put it) in the third one. Terrible film.

I think we need to blame the audience too (to an extent) for the lack of ‘out there’ games.

I think there are ‘out there’ games occasionally made, but they have a tendancy not to sell which doesn’t help. See: Psychonauts, Beyond Good and Evil, etc. Darwinia shows there is an out there outside the mainstream but I guess that’s the problem when the annual recycling juggernauts (EA et al) make the money.

I actually wouldn’t be too strong on Gore’s apparent hypocrisy. The guy was asked to address a games summit, so at least he had something to say that seems like it was intended to be encouraging to creativity, rather than saying something more mundane.